Status of Women committee  I have hope. I really believe in our people, aboriginal people, and I see them moving forward. I don't see us and don't want us to be these people living within programs, and program to program, sitting here at the table and asking for money all the time. That's not who we are. That shouldn't be.

Status of Women committee  No, I don't have an example. But we can be the first.

Status of Women committee  I apologize for my fast voice. We're not victims. We just know the truth. These systems are still in place. Canada still has legislation from way back still in place. We still live under the Indian Act, which dictates a lot of our lives. It dictates who is going to dictate in future generations.

Status of Women committee  In response to the normalization of sexual abuse and other forms of violence that happen in our intimate family homes, I don't think it's.... Of course, that extends into our community and so forth. I think the problem is that we talk around it being a normalization, but I think the mechanisms of denial within society, within that abusive relationship, within the families and so on--the denial and the oppression of the issue of that sexualized violence and sexual abuse--are the normalization.

Status of Women committee  A change in legislation, justice--

Status of Women committee  I wonder what the implications are of answering that question.

Status of Women committee  Well, I don't know...I'm just a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

Status of Women committee  Battered Women's Support Services is a member of the Valentine's memorial march committee. Members of the committee, other community members, and organizations have meetings with the VPD around those issues, questioning their structure, the police structure, the jurisdictional issues, and the continued and ongoing violence against women in the downtown east side and existing Vancouver areas.

Status of Women committee  Okay. Do you have anything to say...?

Status of Women committee  You know, as far back as I remember.... I think I was born when Helen Betty Osborne went missing--the violence against an aboriginal woman in northern Manitoba. Then of course there was an inquiry as a result of it. So violence against aboriginal women isn't new. It's always been on the agenda.

Status of Women committee  About those moneys, did you say they were for on-reserve or off-reserve groups?

Status of Women committee  So on-reserve; okay. There are many.

Status of Women committee  In terms of the $28 million or so that's been divvied up between over 500 bands across the nation, what I want to say is that those are the band-aid solutions that we don't want, right? We're looking for structural change, attitudinal change, socio-political change. That's what we're hoping the moneys would be invested into, as well as the shelters on reserve and off reserve.

Status of Women committee  What problem?

Status of Women committee  What I know and understand about the funding for the organizations I work for is that we rely mostly on donations, on private funders. We all have to scramble for the funding out there that is available for aboriginal programming around preventing violence, and that creates division in our system.